Our Past Tents

Two weeks later, we’ve finally finished up the blog to share our trip with you! The quick and dirty tally of those nine days looks like: 2700+ miles of driving, ~40 miles of backpacking, 8400 feet ascended, 7400 feet descended, two organic burgers in Estes Park, two wonderful Mexican lunches in Raton, NM, two tasty burritos at Chipotle and photographs of four interesting water towers and ten half-buried Cadillacs 🙂

Don’t forget you can see all the photos in this blog bigger (and in many cases, uncropped) by clicking here.

You can also view the photos in a slideshow by clicking here.

Thanks for reading!

The end!
Part 7 – Postscript – Part 1

This is a multi-part trip report, if you haven’t already you should start with Part 1. Remember too that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

We overslept this morning but still took time to enjoy the Belgian waffles at the hotel’s free breakfast bar, which Bryan has been looking forward to all week. Mandy woke up a little grumpy but a trip to Cadillac Ranch, just a few miles from our hotel, fixed that.

Click to see this panorama larger.

Cadillac Ranch is a sort of strange public art project, a set of ten Cadillacs half buried in a cornfield just off the interstate. They’re stuck into the ground at the same angle as the sides of the great pyramids. There’s a pulloff on the access road, and a gate, and a path.

The black paint we’d brought from home worked fine, and though our white didn’t work we found some red paint in the scattered cans around the cars. Bryan played photographer for the most part while Mandy and I tagged Cadillacs. As we left, we gave our cans to a very appreciative bald guy who’d forgotten to bring his own.

Back at the hotel, we loaded the car one last time. Groom, Texas is not only the home of the second largest cross in the western hemisphere; it’s also the location of the intentionally crooked water tower at the long-defunct Britten truck stop. Our drive has taken on the distinct feel of a goofy route 66 teenager road trip. Mandy refuses to get out at the water tower, preferring to stay in the car and listen to her audiobook rather than crouching in the ditch with her parents, taking pictures.

The art deco gas station in Shamrock is the last item on Bryan’s list of roadside attractions. Now it’s just a long slog home. We eat lunch at Chipotle in Oklahoma City, a snack in Van Buren, and we’re home around bedtime.

Click to see this panorama larger.

The story continues…
Part 6 – Part 7 – Postscript

This is a multi-part trip report, if you haven’t already you should start with Part 1. Remember too that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

I wished we’d done the drive from Estes Park east in the daylight. Even in the dark, I recognized it as a place from childhood: at about Mandy’s age, I saw these mountains for the first time and I still remember my amazement. I remember yelling “look at that one!” at every turn, pointing straight up at the mountains looming above our truck. If I’d known this was the place, we could have come this way on the way in. On the other hand, maybe it’s okay that this remains my memory, unshared: her memories of her first mountains here will be about backpacking above the trees, about cooking stew over a tiny camp stove at dusk, about having an alpine lake all to herself at dawn. And that’s all right.

We make it past Denver before stopping at a Hampton Inn. Already asleep, Mandy stumbles into bed. She’s still wearing dirty hiking clothes, with greasy hair and chappy lips, but she’s framed by the clean snow-white covers she’s snuggled into, and she’s asleep again immediately.

Bryan and I unpack damp tents and rain jackets and socks and drape them over the lamps and television, immediately transforming a very nice hotel room into what looks like a bad secondhand gear store. After a week without showers, the hot water and soft washcloths feel luxurious.

Saturday’s drive is an easy one, since we have a head start. I fill out postcards while Bryan drives and Mandy listens to an audiobook; we all enjoy the view as the front range retreats into memory. When I take my turn driving, Bryan, my constant companion and best friend, once again becomes a bored toddler.

We try to stretch out our vacation, stopping at roadside attractions and points of interest. Now we know all about that goofy-looking lump south of Pueblo: Huerfano Butte is a volcanic remnant, named “Orphan” in Spanish, because it’s out in a field, all by itself.

We stop in Walsenburg at their wonderful old post office, which smells like paper and glue, as a post office should, to mail our last postcards. We say goodbye to the big mountains here at the Sangre De Cristos.

We also pull off the interstate to learn about the site of the Ludlow Massacre, also known as the “Birthplace of Public Relations.”

We arrive in Raton in the early afternoon, and eat at the Sands Motel, another ratty-ass diner. We order from the Mexican menu again and aren’t disappointed. Again on the advice of my coworker, whose knowledge of northeastern New Mexican cuisine is somewhat baffling, we buy some tortillas from a little shop along the road and head east.

The drive through New Mexico is pretty. The sky is perfect summer blue, behind the parched-grass ranches with their scattered mesas and hills. The Capulin Volcano almost convinced us to stop, but instead Bryan took photos of it as I drove by. The pastures here are scattered with chunks of black igneous rock, scattered in piles, either belched up out of the ground ages ago or thrown here by the explosions of ancient volcanoes.

The land changes as we cross into Texas: it becomes flatter, with cornfields and irrigation equipment replacing the scruffy pasture. We skip supper, since we’re still full from lunch, and arrive in Amarillo in the early evening.

Our hotel here is nice. We’ve missed the free beer hour but the tap is unattended and Bryan helps himself; we find that cheap beer is much better when it’s free and accompanied by popcorn. I go to the pool with Mandy, which is mobbed. “Why don’t you ask one of those girls to play?” I ask. “Oh, they already asked me but I told them that I’m not sociable.” Mandy does fine with adults, and fine on her own; other kids baffle her.

The story continues…
Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

This is a multi-part trip report, if you haven’t already you should start with Part 1. Remember too that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

This morning at Moraine Park, we got the highest compliment possible from a fellow tent person in a car campground: “You’re so quiet.”

Today’s our day off. After yesterday, we need one. I’m up early, repacking the food bin, sorting out all the stuff in the back of the car. We’re heading to Estes Park for a quick breakfast and a trip to “Dad’s Laundromat” but first we need to pick up our next backpacking permit.

After breakfast, Bryan and Mandy drop me off at the laundromat and run to the outdoor store for a water pump attachment and new boot laces while I finish up with the clothes. We’re all grumpy this morning for some reason we don’t understand, and it’s hard to take sides when everybody’s wrong, but clean shirts and new boot laces help a little.

Bryan’s been looking forward to showing us Fall River Road, and we leave just after noon to experience it in all its gravelly one-way glory. We’re quickly past the twisted, sparse trees to above treeline, and it feels like we can see forever. Mandy has fallen in love with this landscape, even more than the other places here in the park.

This gravel road was the original route through the park and over the continental divide but, due to maintenance issues, they had to construct Trail Ridge Road (the highest continuously paved road in the US) which we’ll take on the way back.

At the Alpine Visitors Center we learn the difference between a glacier and snowpack but don’t take time to stay for the ranger program on lightning. The roof is covered with heavy wooden timbers to keep it from blowing away; winds here regularly get to above 100 mph in the winter and the center is only open for a few months in the summertime each year.

We return to the parking lot, repack, and catch the shuttle back to the Glacier Gorge trailhead for a short uphill hike to the Boulder Brook backcountry site, where we’ll spend the night. We hike in our big packs through throngs of tourists up to Alberta Falls, where we take the North Longs Peak trail and abruptly find ourselves completely alone. We hike about three miles this afternoon, without seeing any other people, on the gently upward slope of a very nicely built trail. We stop a couple of times this afternoon, to pump water, to put moleskin on a hot spot on Mandy’s toe, but generally we feel good and make decent time.

We’ve been trying hard to take care of ourselves. Bryan set his watch’s alarm to fifteen minutes, and when it goes off we take a quick break and a drink. We can tell that our bodies are getting used to the thinner air at this altitude, and for the first time today we hike without uncomfortable breathing. We get to camp just before dark and after working together to set up the tents, Bryan pumps water while Mandy and I start supper away from camp, boiling water and measuring it into the foil pouches that hold beef stew and pasta.

I realize that I’m still too close, so I find a place farther from camp and carry the food, wrapped in my down vest for insulation, to the new kitchen area. In the process, I ooze spinach puttanesca all over my vest! While Mandy and Bryan eat I have to go to the creek in the dark to wash my vest out, and by the time I hang it from a tree to dry my remaining supper is ready. We get things organized for tomorrow’s early morning and we’re in bed, at around 10,000 feet, by around nine. I sleep well despite being certain that my nice vest will be devoured by creatures in the night.

Oh-three-hundred came much earlier than we wanted it to but even Mandy got up and around without complaint, shoving her feet into boots in the dark. We decided, sometime shortly after our stop at the group campsite privy, that someone needs to produce a tshirt with a list of “Privies of Rocky Mountain National Park” with elevations and boxes to check off. The weather’s nice — not as chilly as we expected — and the hike goes well.

I keep thinking about bears. Not nice bears. Though we haven’t seen one, there have been several reports of bears, many of them mamas with cubs, on our hikes on previous days. Our previous trips in the past year have resulted in run-ins with large scary creatures, and I keep expecting this one to be no different. It’s very, very dark. And then we step across some VERY FRESH BEAR POOP in the trail. We keep going along at a good clip but we’re too sleepy to remember the words to any songs. I remember this as a very difficult portion of the day.

Dawn comes on the side of Battle Mountain. We’re well above treeline and I take a break while Bryan and Mandy take some photographs; I’m having trouble breathing, though Bryan and Mandy are fine. It’s not much farther to Granite Pass, where we’ll meet up with the East Long’s Peak trail and the steady stream of other hikers who will try to summit today.

Just at Granite Pass it starts to drizzle. It’s not cold, and it’s not raining much, so we pull out our raincoats and keep walking up the switchback trail to the boulderfield. The view from here is stunning, even though it’s misty; we walk through high meadows of green grass dotted with big rocks, and we see mountains spread out in the distance for miles and miles and miles.

By the way, in the photo below you can see how Longs Peak was shrouded in clouds (hint: Longs is in the top center of the photo).

It rains more and more as we get to the Boulderfield. People who’ve slept here huddle unhappily outside their tents, next to the stone windbreaks. We can see people standing in the keyhole above, deciding whether to go forward with their climb. We watch a marmot scurry around, his tail moving in quick circles as he runs, excited by all the people in his backyard. The people are less excited, because we’re all trying to decide whether to turn back or go forward.

The rain continues; now the whole sky is layered in gray blankets as far as we can see. Long’s Peak is socked in clouds; we might be able to make it to the top but we wouldn’t be able to see a thing from there. The exposed portions of the steep trail will be slippery in the wet. We’re frustrated; I’m breathing better and feeling fine, Bryan’s not sick as he’d been last time he’d tried Long’s. Mandy’s in fine shape, too; our whole week has been planned so that we’d feel good at this point in our Long’s Peak hike, and we do feel good, but the weather is awful.

We start slogging down the switchbacks in the rain, toward our base camp. Mandy is disappointed but a good sport; Bryan’s really much sadder than even he’d anticipated but he tries not to show it. At Granite Pass we stop to rest, and a couple of hikers stop to visit. They hadn’t summitted either; in fact, only one person had, quite early, and he’d been turning other people around as they came up the mountain.

After the first disappointment wears off, we enjoy our hike down. Mandy hams it up, doing inexplicable Elvis impersonations and farting cheerfully. The mist shrouds the farther mountains but we can still see what we missed on the way up the trail in the dark. Near treeline the scrubby twisted trees, called krumholtz, are interesting and alien, and farther down we pass through woods full of enormous, twisted, dead spruce trees. Decimated by fire a hundred years ago, the woods in this area still haven’t fully recovered. Mandy makes up songs about the relative size and tastiness of small woodland creatures:

“I want a chimpmunk for breakfast,
a squirrel for lunch,
a pica for supper,
or maybe a bunch.”

We get back to our base camp at Boulder Brook around noon, already having hiked ten miles for the day. We crawl back into our beds in a light rain and fall asleep; this may be my best nap ever. The sun is starting to peek out when we wake around three. I vote not to hike out this afternoon; our plan was to spend another night here, but I can’t argue against the practicality of a head start and I let myself be bribed by the promise of another cheeseburger from the Rock Inn. We pack up camp and head downhill.

The Boulder Brook trail appears to be the bastard path of the national park. It’s steep but very pretty, totally untraveled, and while it was built well it now seems to be entirely unmaintained. We follow the stream that, in this morning’s boulderfield, was barely more than a trickle; now it’s a substantial and steep creek rolling down from the mountain. We’re back at the car at six, and reflect on the wisdom of the day’s decision not to keep climbing. The sky’s blue down here, and the day’s turned out warm, but Long’s Peak above us is still socked in clouds.

We have to try two visitors’ centers before finding one with good t-shirts. Later, driving through Estes Park, we can’t help picking out the places we’ll go on our next visit, the things we were interested in but didn’t have time to do this time, the items to look at when we come back to try Long’s Peak again. We have another excellent cheeseburger before heading back to the interstate, toward home.

The story continues…
Part 4 – Part 5 – Part 6

This is a multi-part trip report, if you haven’t already you should start with Part 1. Remember too that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

After throwing our backpacks into the Subaru and repacking light daypacks, we’re off on the shuttle again for the Glacier Gorge trailhead and the walk to Sky Pond. We think it should be about three miles, according to our National Geographic Map (which we’re learning not to trust). The trailhead signage indicates that it’s closer to five miles. We’re starting about noon and have to be back by seven for the last shuttle, so time’s on our mind as we start out. If it really is a ten mile round trip, with this much elevation change we’ll really have to hustle.

We pass the Loch, where we pump water and squint at Timberline Falls in the distance. We watch a foreign tourist clown around on a rock in the middle, and Mandy has a long portrait session with a chipmunk before getting fussed at when he climbs on her camera bag and she calmly picks him up and sets him on the ground.

Around here the crowd thins quite a bit. The trails are so good, throughout the park, even the farther-out trails that get less traffic. They’re well engineered and well maintained. In places we pass little flags with notes for maintenance crews to smooth the surface or install lines of rocks to divert the water and keep it from washing out the trail.

Mandy’s first snowpack’s here, and the beauty of the falls is completely lost on her as she happily writes her name in the crusty white wall before stabbing at it with her hiking poles until we make her stop.

We scramble up the edge of the falls and don’t even stop at beautiful Glass Lake. We get to Sky Pond at about 4:30 and waste no time removing socks and shoes to dip our toes in the frigid water just below the snow. We laugh as we see the oily yuck from our dirty feet float to the surface of the water.

We have the lake almost to ourselves, and we take a few minutes to admire the Petit Grepon and the Sharks Tooth. Yes, Mandy says, it was worth the hike up. Yes, she says, this is much, much better than Disneyworld. In Disneyworld there’s no treeline, and there’s no lake that makes your whole foot numb if you put it in for three minutes.

We leave Sky Pond a few minutes before five and make it to the trailhead right at seven; we’ve hiked five miles in just over two hours, and we’re beat. We catch the next-to-last bus back to the Park and Ride and set up camp back at Moraine Park before a trip to the Rock Inn Mountain Tavern (see video below for a quick look around this great restaurant) for good sweet potato fries and cheeseburgers made with local beef on organic buns. The bathrooms have warm water, and there’s ice in the glasses, and tonight we don’t take those things for granted. The Rock Inn’s playing bluegrass music at the edge of hearing, and it’s wooden and dark.

After a thirteen mile day, Mandy’s one tired little girl and we can’t pretend to be in much better shape. It’s time for bed.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/uHk22EwMe1s&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0

The story continues…
Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

This is a multi-part trip report, if you haven’t already you should start with Part 1. Remember too that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

This morning we pick up our first backcountry camping permit before driving into Estes Park for breakfast and to pick up our bear canister. We resolve a strange mixup about the container, buy Bryan a funny collapsible Chinese hiking hat thing, and hurry back to Moraine Park to pack up camp. At the Park and Ride lot, we disgorge the entire contents of the Subaru into the parking area. After packing for our first two-night loop, we catch the shuttle to the trailhead.

It’s a great day. The sky is blue with cheerful puffy clouds, the mountains are beautiful, and the temperature is perfect: slightly too warm when hiking but slightly chilly when we stop. There are lots and lots of people crowding the trails for the first two or three miles, though past Fern Falls the tourists thin out. I begin to think we won’t make it to camp before dark, but after the trail junction at Fern Lake our path to Spruce Lake goes mostly downhill and we make good time. The spruce trees here look silly, like pines with heavy bodies and short arms. We’ve walked about five miles in about five hours, which isn’t bad considering that we have heavy loads and we’ve walked uphill all day; we’re at nearly 10,000 feet now. We have the tents up and water boiling before night falls on our own private lake.

The privies at these campsites are well done; Mandy says “Haha! I peed in a can in the woods!” There are no structures at all, just a dugout hole below a plywood platform and a metal toilet with a cover, facing away from the trail into the woods. Mandy’s up first this morning, racing down to the lake with her camera before coming back to her tent to read a bat book. The lake is beautiful in the morning light: the trout swim in clear water under the glass-calm surface, rimmed with spruce, framed in mountains. We lie in the warm orange tent enjoying the stillness before a busy day.

A little later, we cook breakfast next to the lake and then lie on a big warm rock together at the edge of the water, dozing in the sunshine.

The hike out to Fern Lake is pleasant; the trail builders have laid half-timbers across the marshy spots where wildflowers still bloom. It’s a dry, breezy day, and there’s lots of traffic on the main trail here; we stop for a snack at the ranger patrol cabin before walking along the edge of the lake. Sitting next to her baby carrier, a mom rests on the shore of the lake nursing her baby. (She’s at least five miles from a trailhead: good for her!)

We stop at Odessa Lake for lunch and to pump water. The chipmunks here are convinced that we’re cooking just for them and we have to keep a close eye on our packs and lunches. We’ve been walking through postcards all day, quiet lakes reflecting green trees, with treeline not far above us, topped with layers of rock and snow and deep blue summer sky.

I walk down a bit to find a better place to pump water and enjoy a little quiet. I can barely hear the murmur of Bryan’s and Mandy’s voices nearby. Mandy has started saying things like “In a few years, when you come here to visit me…” She’s decided to move here as soon as possible. Apparently this conclusion was reached somewhere between The Pool and Fern Falls, without the need for much discussion with us.

This week feels like a gift, some kind of grace, a few days stolen between the busyness of summer school and Tulsa trips and the beginning of fall classes and chores.

After Odessa Lake, the trail goes up. And then it goes up, and up, and up. These mountains are big in a way we didn’t understand from just looking; it’s something one realizes quite clearly when one has hiked uphill for two days straight. The views from this section of trail, from the big boulder fields we traverse, is stunning. We’re all still cheerful; even Mandy is happily slogging along in her big pack. Today we hike 4.3 miles in 5.5 hours, including the lunch stop, and we’ll sleep tonight at just over 10,000 feet.

Just after arriving at Sourdough camp, a big mule deer comes to visit, and he returns several times during the evening. Bryan and Mandy go after water and I cook supper a distance from camp. Our packets of warm food are tucked inside my vest to cook, and I have time to sit and think: why do we backpack? I say it’s to get away from people, to have places like these all to ourselves, and that’s true. Crowded campgrounds are sad and irritating, too close to too many people. But there’s something else, too, something that isn’t so easy to explain. Backpacking, I think, reduces the day to its essential elements. We walk. We get water. We cook food. We set up shelters. We are a family. And that’s all. Life is so complicated, sometimes; backpacking reduces it to its essentials, if only for a few days.

After supper and a trip to the privy, we all sleep well. We’re up early to hike out, and easy hike downhill to the trailhead.

The story continues…
Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

This is a multi-part trip report, if you haven’t already you should start with Part 1. Remember too that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

Up before sunrise, we leave the tents and bundle up to drive to Great Sand Dunes National Park. The outlines of the mountains and dunes are visible as we get there, and we walk out into the softly lit sand (and cold wind) to watch the sunrise. The Sangre de Cristo mountains look distant still, in misty dawn light, but the dunes glow warm and pink as morning comes.

Click to see this panorama in a bigger size!

After some time spent taking photographs dunes around us, Mandy and I leave Bryan with his tripod and walk toward the nearest dunes. We reach the top of the first one just as the first rays appear.

Mandy stands at the lip of the next dune, with her camera held up. She looks for all the world like a very short National Geographic photographer, working in some exotic and dangerous foreign assignment. It’s only for a moment, though; she holds her arms up, yells, and plunges down the side of the dune, suddenly a little kid again.

After a stop at the small but excellent visitors center, we fill out postcards and eat breakfast at the restaurant just outside the park. The food’s no good but the decor features a mounted head with an antler protruding from the stuffed thing’s forehead.

We make a quick stop back at San Luis Lakes to pack up camp, and Bryan naps in the car until a stop in Blanca where a detour to the tiny post office leads us past a fence made entirely of cross country skis.

In Pueblo we stop at Chipotle for an excellent lunch, and I nap until Colorado Springs. The drive up the front range is pretty, made even more fun by Mandy’s excited amazement. “It’s so beautiful,” she says. “Wow, look at that one!”

The REI “Flagship Store” in Denver is huge, an old brick warehouse converted into a store, with exposed metal beams and a 45 foot indoor climbing wall. Arriving only an hour before closing time on Sunday afternoon, we practically jog through the store, stopping long enough to snag a few items on our list, including a new harness for Bryan and some purple climbing shoes for me. The store sits near the river, and there’s a little park on the grounds with boulders for kids to climb on, statues of animals, and aspen trees. It’s right on a walking and bike trail, next to Confluence Park‘s water play area. Even on a Sunday evening, the park is crowded with inner tubes and pool noodles and people splashing in the shallow water. The whole area is very busy, not with cars but with people on foot and on bikes.

In Boulder, we drive around until Bryan finds a place in memory: the Pearl Street Mall. It’s a great outdoor shopping area with interesting stores and street performers and the smells of good food. After stuffing ourselves silly on pasta and cheesecake, we walk back to the car and drive to Rocky Mountain National Park.

We arrive late but the Moraine Park Campground people helpfully list the names of the campers arriving after the kiosk is shut down; we quickly find our name and campsite number and set up tents, again, in the glare of the headlights. We’ve driven 1353 miles since leaving home, and we’ll sleep well tonight at over 8,000 feet.

The story continues…
Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

Remember that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

We leave Benton at six and arrive late at Lake Eufala State Park. We get a nice, flat tent site far away from anybody else, and we set up camp in the headlights of the car. The bugs are terrible and it’s very hot; we’d packed sleeping bags expecting chilly temperatures at elevation, and didn’t really think about the night or two we’d spend in the muggy midwestern summer.

We wake up sticky and gross, but since we leave before seven, the campsite’s “free”. We stop in Okemah to see the first exciting roadside attraction of our trip: a row of three water towers helpfully labeled “HOT”, “COLD”, and “HOME OF WOODY GUTHRIE.” The hand dryers in the Valero gas station bathroom are incredibly powerful: we giggle as the skin on our hands and arms flaps loosely. We’re in a place we’ve never been before, and it feels like our trip has started.

Bryan’s been inexplicably excited about seeing the Oklahoma panhandle, so I helpfully drive so that he won’t miss a minute of the tremendous excitingness of, um, not much. We play a game in which we have to find things starting with each letter of the alphabet. It takes nearly an hour and includes two minor arguments and such thrilling items as “C is for Cows” and “N is for Nothing.”

I don’t mind driving on trips, I really don’t, and I try to explain this to Bryan. What I mind is that, when he’s the passenger, he’s bored. He sings. He pokes people. He makes stupid trumpet noises with his mouth. He starts arguments about dumb things just to entertain himself. Today he discovered “licking by proxy,” a technique in which he slobbers on his hand and then tries to wipe it on the driver. This is incredibly irritating and, more importantly, seems tremendously unsafe. I try to get him to drive as much as possible; licking by proxy is much more difficult if Bryan is the driver.

On the advice of a coworker, we eat at a ratty-ass motel diner in Raton, New Mexico called The Oasis Restaurant. The review I read had indicated that the food was good but that the carpet in the rooms was threadbare pink shag. (We chose this eatery over the one with the review that said “Bring a gun.”) We all order from the Mexican side of the menu: Damn. Yum.

About bedtime, we arrive at San Luis Lakes State Park in Colorado at 7,500 feet. We add layers of fleece and down before setting up tents next to the corrugated-metal ramada. It’s the tallest thing here; all the trees and bushes are waist high. We don’t know what it looks like by day, but the nearly-full moon rising over the nearby mountains, over the lake, is beautiful.

The story continues…
Part 1 – Part 2